Friends & Rivals Read Free Page A

paunchy, balding men, none of whom he’d have recognized had Catriona not told him their names. It was depressing.
    â€˜We’ve aged,’ he said to Catriona, once he finally managed to get her alone. ‘Jamie Grayson looks as old as the fucking hills.’
    â€˜Poor Jamie,’ Catriona frowned. ‘He’s had a rough year, what with the divorce and everything. Anyway,
you
haven’t aged. You and Ivan both look disgustingly young and handsome.’
    Jack laughed. ‘Ivan maybe. Not me. How is he, anyway? How are the two of you?’
    â€˜We’re fine.’ Catriona smiled, hoping it didn’t look as forced as it felt. Jack was too tactful to spell it out, but she knew what ‘
how are the two of you?
’ meant. About five years ago, she’d discovered Ivan had been having an affair with one of the girls at Jester. He’d broken it off, and seemed genuinely remorseful at the time. But then a year later, she’d caught him at it again. Since then, things had been a lot better. When Ivan was in London he called every night to say goodnight to her, and to reassure her he was alone. He’d started going to therapy, and talking to Catriona more openly about his insecurities. Turning forty, in particular, bothered him, but rather than boosting his ego with another fling, he’d started spending more time with the children, especially Hector who worshipped his father like a god.
    â€˜I think Ivan’s finally growing up,’ Catriona told Jack. For some reason she felt the need to expand on ‘we’re fine’. ‘I don’t mean that nastily. It’s just that, you know, he’s struggled with his age and the changes in our lives. But he seems more peaceful now. More content.’
    â€˜Who’s more content?’
    A pretty American woman in a shapeless Ali Hewson black dress sidled up to them. Jack’s heart sank. ‘Hello, Stella.’
    Stella Bayley was the wife of Brett Bayley, lead guitarist of supergroup The Blitz. Brett and his bandmates were clients of Jack’s in Los Angeles, but were currently halfway through a European tour, so Brett and Stella were temporarily based in London. Brett was thick as a plank with an ego the size of Kansas and, if the groupies were to be believed, a dick to match. His wife, oblivious to Brett’s affairs but accepting of his long absences, had devoted her free time to becoming a tireless (and tiresome) eco-campaigner. Her blog, Stella’s World, in which she doled out lifestyle and parenting advice to the masses, was an inexplicable hit online. Inexplicable because anyone who had actually
met
Stella Bayley knew that her entire life was run by a fleet of exhausted staff, and that she herself had about as much maternal nous as a banana skin.
    â€˜How are you liking England?’ Jack asked politely. ‘Are you settled in yet?’
    â€˜Settled in?’ Stella gave her trademark tinkling laugh. ‘If you call living out of packing cases settled in, then yeah. You know the other day, Miley comes up to me and she’s like “Mommy, Mommy, can we have a picnic?” And of course it was raining outside, so I got some sheets and draped them over two of these damn cases, like a little tent, you know? And we had an
indoor picnic!
How cute is that? A little quinoa, some rice cakes and raisins made to look like smiley faces. I put it on the blog and my readers were like, Oh my God that is so
cute.
And I’m like, I
know.
I love England! I love the rain! You should hear Miley’s accent. I swear she sounds like Princess Diana, doesn’t she, Catriona?’
    â€˜Erm …’ said Catriona. She had only met Miley Bayley once. As she remembered, the three-year-old barely spoke, but when she did she sounded like Mickey Mouse on helium.
    Stella prattled on. ‘I’m always telling my readers: having fun with your kids doesn’t have to mean spending a lot of